Slash fiction has held its own in the Harry Potter canon of slash fiction for years, but it’s not a place actors go very often. Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the HP movie adaptations, didn’t see it until a fan handed him a stack of stories.
“It was given to me by somebody, and I felt I should take a look at it. I felt if someone went through the trouble to write it and print it and bring it to me, I would look at it, but it was horrible, horrible stuff.” Lewis struggled to describe what the writer had his character do. “There’s children in the room, so I can’t really go into it, but it was horrible stuff.”
He went on to say it wasn’t the fault of the writing, which was actually rather good.
“It was nice. It was well written; the grammar was great. I felt like I was there, but it was horrible stuff.”
The 19-year-old English actor is the sole representative of the HP franchise at Dragon*Con this year. Lewis has been holding court, talking about a variety of topics: his career, throwing darts at a picture of Osama Bin Laden, and messing with drunken people on the streets of London. Lewis said he would like to act, but the effort of being a 19-year-old in a country that allows teenagers to drink has sidetracked his ambition.
“I’ve told my agent I want to act, but I don’t know what kind of roles I want to play, just act,” he said.
“For a year, Rupert [Grint] had a dart board with a picture of Bin Laden on it,” said Lewis. “Rupert got quite good at darts.”
Lewis told fans of how he, Alfred (Alfie) Enoch, and Freddie Stroma were out in London and posed for a picture with a drunken “fan.”
“This guy was quite drunk, and he says to Alfie, ‘You’re that black guy in Lord of the Rings?’ and we’re like, ‘Yeah he is,'” Lewis said. “He said to me, ‘You were in Matilda,’ and I was like, ‘No man, I’m a bartender from Leeds.’ He asks for a picture, and all three of us are in a picture with him, and I just wanted to be there the next day when he realized that [Alfie] was the black guy from Harry Potter and I wasn’t in Matilda.”
